Policing - in brief (23)
01 March 2005
Scotland: G8 policing and security costs approach £100 million: The Times newspaper has estimated that the cost for the UK of hosting July's G8 summit, which is to be held at the £500 per night Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire, "is spiralling towards £100 million". The paper includes in its estimate £50 million for the cost of policing with a further £9 million accounted for by travel, catering and accommodation. The remainder is made up from an "undisclosed sum, thought to extend to tens of millions of pounds [that] has been set aside for additional security arrangements and contingency plans...". This works out at £30 million per day or £12 million a head. Among the subjects the G8 members - Britain, France Russia, Germany, Italy, USA, Japan and Canada - will be discussing is poverty in Africa. Thousands of policemen who will be guarding an "exclusion zone" will be accompanied by several hundred US secret service agents. The Scottish media has reported that a US aircraft carrier, packed with hundreds of US marines, will be stationed off the west coast of Scotland during the summit and that fighter planes will be stationed at an RAF base at St. Andrews. A military source told the
Scotsman newspaper: "The Americans want to do everything themselves . They want to have their own helicopters, their own armoured limousines...They also want their own command post if Bush decides they have to carry out their own operation." See
http://www.gleneagles.org.uk/ for the G8 alternatives website.
Times 20.5.05. Scotsman 19.5.05
UK: "I'll smash your fucking Arab face in": An 18-year old Kurdish youth had charges against him dismissed after the court was played a recording of a police officer threatening to frame him and to "smash his face in". The youth, from west London, appeared at West London Youth Court in May and faced evidence from the Paddington Green police officer and a colleague who claimed that he had used foul language towards them. The officers were unaware that the youth had recorded them threatening and swearing at him on his mobile phone. When the recording was played before the court the charges against him were thrown out because, as district judge David Simpson, said "I could not believe a word of the police evidence." He continued: "No magistrate, judge or jury could convict on the evidence of these officers. I cannot believe anything these officers have told me." In a transcript of the recording the police officer, PC David Yeats, tells the youth: "Just shut the fuck up you cunt, otherwise I'm going to smash your fucking face in [laughter] 'cause you're a fucking robbing, raping arsehole" and "this is one [charge] you won't fucking get off at court because I'll write it up properly". The Metropolitan commissioner, Ian Blair, said that Yates would be sacked if the case was proved against him; he is currently suspended from duty and is being investigated for racial harassment.
Independent 19.5.05.